1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for thermally insulating adjacent temperature controlled processing chambers.
2. Description of Related Art
Processing chambers, such as those used in semiconductor manufacturing, often need to be maintained at a particular temperature to be operative. Examples of temperature sensitive processes include chemical oxide removal (COR) treatment and substrate heat treatment.
COR treatment can be used to process a mask in an oxide layer of a semiconductor device which can be used to etch a substrate with feature dimensions around 100 nanometers or less. COR treatment may include exposing surfaces of the oxide layer to process gases and heat treating the chemically treated oxide of the semiconductor device.
It may be desirable to perform each of these processes (i.e., chemical treatment and heat treatment) at different temperatures. Accordingly, these processes may be performed in different chambers. Additionally, exposure of the semiconductor device outside of the chambers may not be desirable between the processing phases.